Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/278

258 of their entering on their functions; but they ceased to be magistrates, not upon the expiry of the set term, but only upon their publicly and solemnly demitting their office: so that in the event of their daring to disregard the term and continuing their magistracy beyond the year their official acts were nevertheless valid, and in the earlier times they scarcely incurred any other than a moral responsibility. The inconsistency between full sovereignty and a set term assigned to that sovereignty by law was so vividly felt, that its tenure for life was only avoided by means of the magistrate declaring his own (in some sense free) will in the matter, and the magistrate was not restricted directly by the law, but only as it were induced by it to restrict himself. Nevertheless this tenure of the highest magistracy for a set term, which its holders but once or twice ventured to overstep, was of the deepest importance. As an immediate consequence of it, the practical irresponsibility of the king was lost in the case of the consul. The position of the king indeed in the Roman commonwealth was under and not above the law; but, as according to the Roman view the supreme judge could not be prosecuted at his own bar, while the king might perpetrate a crime, there was for him no tribunal and no punishment. The consul, again, if he had committed murder or treason, was protected by his office only so long as it lasted. On his retirement he was liable to the ordinary penal jurisdiction like any other burgess.

To these changes of a prominent nature, affecting the principles of the constitution, other restrictions were added of a subordinate and administrative character, some of which nevertheless produced a deep effect. The privilege of the king to have his fields tilled by taskwork of the burgesses, and the special relation of clientship in which the metœci as a body must have stood to the king, ceased of themselves with the life-tenure of the office.

Hitherto, in criminal processes as well as in fines and